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UH Students Earn Their Ride in MicrogravityNASA Project Gives Students a Chance to Learn Through ‘Trial and Error’

November 6, 2013-Houston-

A ride in the “vomit comet”
may not be for everyone, but then, few people get the opportunity.

“I don’t think a lot of people would be able
to say they had done that,” Steven Hong said.

Hong, a sophomore petroleum engineering
student at the University of Houston, and his teammates soon will get their
chance to fly in the “comet,” also known as NASA’s reduced gravity aircraft.

The team is working with a NASA scientist
to design, build, fly and evaluate an experiment based on NASA research and, as
part of the Reduced Gravity Education Flight Program, will perform their
experiment aboard a microgravity aircraft that produces periods of
weightlessness for up to 25 seconds at a time.

Hong is part of the five-student Cougarnaut
team; all signed up last spring as freshmen and are now sophomores.

Their project – to freeze water in a
reduced gravity environment – isn’t what they initially proposed. And the
system they ultimately designed and built isn’t based on their first idea. Or even
their second.

Aashini Patel, a biomedical engineering
major, said they learned through trial and error.

“Nothing really works out as
you plan it,” she said.

Lisa Nguyen and Muskan Agarwal, both
biomedical engineering majors, and Luciano Posada, a chemical engineering
major, completed the team. Agarwal transferred to Rice University over the
summer; Posada transferred to the University of Texas at Austin.

That made working on the project more
difficult; the students did most of the work on weekends, meeting on the UH
campus.

Another lesson learned?

“Order extra,” Nguyen said. “You’ll need
it.”

The students originally proposed studying
the behavior of cells in microgravity and asked Ann Cheek, an instructional
assistant professor of biology, to serve as their faculty mentor.

But NASA assigned a different project
after they were accepted into the program, and Cheek worked to find support
from engineering faculty, as well as lab space.

Dong Liu, associate
professor of mechanical engineering, and two of his graduate students helped
the Cougarnauts with design and structural analysis. Dave Shattuck,
associate dean for undergraduate programs for the Cullen College of
Engineering, helped ensure the project received funding from the college.

Patel said Katherine
Zerda, director of the Program for Mastery in Engineering Studies (PROMES), helped
the team order supplies and understand the financial aspects of the project, and
also provided space to work in a corner of the PROMES lounge.

NASA researcher Scott Hansen also served
as a mentor, and the students touched base with him every week, other than
during the federal government shutdown.

“No
matter what you do, water will expand when it freezes,” Hong said.

But it will behave differently in
microgravity, and Patel said the group ultimately devised two systems,
along with a control system, for the experiment.

They will test and record all three during
two flights to determine which method freezes the water most quickly, and how
freezing affects the water.

According to NASA, the flight achieves
periods of weightlessness through a series of about 30 roller coaster-like
parabolas over the Gulf of Mexico. During the free falls, the students will
gather data in the environment, which mimics space.

The UH team was selected for the Minority
University Research and Education Program based on scientific merit and
educational outreach potential, and the students said they will talk with middle
school students to encourage them to study engineering and other science and
math fields.

They report to Ellington Field Nov. 8, and
every weekday for the next week for training and to make their flights.
Afterward, they will evaluate their findings and provide the results to NASA.

But they already have drawn one
conclusion.

"What
we’re learning in class really is applicable to real life,” Hong said. “There
is a reason we learned it.”